How much power do consumers have in our economy? In theory they have all the power but in reality their power varies according to the degree of competition in any industry and their own personality.

Economic power means the ability to make decisions about what and how much is produced. If we lived in small self-contained communities such as a Pacific island these decisions would be made mostly by people for themselves. If we had perfect competition we would also make these decisions for ourselves and the market mechanism would transmit our decisions to producers. As there are lots of people who want to make decisions for others one of the conflicts of our society is over economic decision-making.

Two examples illustrate how decision-making by individuals can vary according to competition in the industry. The provision of spiritual services is, at least in Canada, the industry which comes closes to perfect competition. Education is a mostly a monopoly.

As most of us Canadians have a strong commitment to freedom of religion people are free to attend the church of their choice or not at all. This means governments do nothing to restrict competition. Anyone with an inclination to preach can rent a school or community hall on Sunday mornings and some congregations allow anyone to do services. No licenses are required by the government although some denominations use ordination, a form of licensing. A minister’s career path is determined by his ability and his/her reputation. The Bible and most other religious texts are not copyrighted. Churches receive no government subsidies other than an exemption from property taxes (which makes entry into the business easier).

On the other hand governments interfere extensively in education. Parents are required by law the send their children to school, teachers must be licensed and governments closely supervise curriculum. Teachers generally must be licensed and are very difficult to fire. Job security goes with length of service rather than teaching skills. The result is a monopoly which is strongly defended by its employees.

In the spiritual world the customers are kings and make their own decisions.. :People can and do express dissatisfaction with their feet and some people go church shopping. Ministers can be and are fired. (My observation is that ministers are asked to leave for one of two reasons: They get into an inappropriate relationship or they stay too long.) Those people with the right skills rise to the top and those without the skills drop out. To survive churches and staff must satisfy the spiritual needs of their congregations.

In education the customers (or their parents) make very few decisions. They have no say in the curriculum and very little over who teaches their children. Education is one of the most important things parents should give their children, yet it is where they have the least control. This may be why home schooling and private schools are appealing to those who can manage them. I believe education is too important to leave all decision-making to those employed in the field.

In other sections of the economy producers have to be more creative in influencing customer decision-making. Governments are usually willing to limit competition with licensing, tariffs, subsidies, patents and copyright. Some firms can use the media to make emotional appeals to customers. Consumer power comes from being able to switch to another provider. The reaction to emotional appeals may vary by person and personality. Maybe those people who don’t watch television have it easier when it comes to economic decision-making.

Another aspect of economic control is money creation. The fractional reserve money we currently use creates money when bankers make loans. This gives bankers a great deal of power to decide what economic activity happens and who does it. On the other hand creating money via a national exchange trading system as proposed in the essay “LETS go to market: Dealing with the economic crisis” on this weblog would transfer this power to individuals.

Some of us like to make our own decisions, some people like to make decisions for others and probably some people don’t care. As one of those who likes to make his own decisions I like the perfect competition model.

If you liked this post your are invited to comment, press the like button and/or click one of the share buttons. If you disagree you are invited to say why in a comment. While I like the idea of sharing this platform, my personality is such that I don’t reply to many comments.

One Response

1. the power of consumers do not depend on economy but availability of funds or demand e.g. different pharmaceuticals companies make same medicines of same formula but with different names and with variety of prices and I prefer the cheaper.
2.The two most consuming commodities in the world are arms /ammunition & Cosmetics and note that simple bombs and arms are made locally almost in the whole world why the manufacturing of arms are not banned? Simply, as my Late Father told in early 1970s, because the manufacturers of arms support the congress candidate in response they can not oppose the business lines of their supporters.
3. As to education it should be the responsibility of learned peoples to educate illiterates on volunteer bases entirely at least for a day or some hours in a week this will reduce the prices of education. In the same manner if we all spent some time entirely on volunteer bases for social welfare I do believe that the economy will be in our hand.
4. I don’t believe in monopoly and perfect competition as indeed in the history either or both of the conditions never happens so it is just a theory.
5. I do believe in merit and justice only.

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Cover Notes

After my first family broke up I went to the University of British Columbia and did a degree in economics because I was intrigued by the way in which money is created and because I wanted to understand the dynamics of how we exchange goods and services.

I concluded economics is mostly about relationships and we should evaluate economic policies by how they contribute to good relationships.

We have two major economic problems with which we should be dealing. The first is that while we have lots of energy and mineral resources left on this planet, we have used up the most easily accessible. Those that are left require an excessive amount of energy to extract. The second major problem is that our so-called "market" economy is largely based on legislation which restricts competition and thus allows some people an unequal share of the agricultural surplus.

To deal with these problems we need to focus our economy on a policy of sharing in the same way that families and people in small-scale societies share their food. We also need a universal guaranteed income scheme AND a new way of creating money. This would be a tremendous transfer of decision-making power from governments and bankers to individuals.

In this book you will learn:

why the economic principles of marginal cost and the elasticity of the demand curve say it should be priced at 99 cents.

why relationships are an important part of economics.

what it takes to make a good relationship.

that our civilization is based upon a huge agricultural surplus which should be considered an inheritance to be shared equally by everyone.

how the financial and the physical aspects of the economy interact.

how money is created out of thin air and the problems this creates for our well being.

how we can finance a guaranteed annual income scheme.

how to become a part of the ten percent,

how not to become a slave.

The list of ebook stores from which you may download this book is at the top of the home page.

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